"FELUCCA - Early morning vision of the Nile"
"FELUCCAS - All day, sometimes without wind..."
"ASWAN FROM THE NILE - Including the "Old Cataract Hotel" (top left), where Agatha Christie wrote «Death on the Nile», and where Tsar Nicolas II, Winston Churchill, Egypt's King Farouk, Lady Diana and Princess Caroline of Monaco spent some time. Closed for restoration, it will reopen as Sofitel Legend in September 2011"
"ARCHANGEL MICHAEL'S COPTIC ORTHODOX CATHEDRAL - Consecrated in 2006, it is the Cathedral of the Egyptian Christians in Aswan"
"ASWAN VIEWS - Desert, Nile, Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan Dam, Mövenpick Hotel and USSR-style monument..."
"HENRY MOORE BY THE NILE"
"EGYPTIAN LA DIGUE"
"THE DESERT IS SO CLOSE"
"THE AGA KHAN MAUSOLEUM - The pink granite structure was built for Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, who was educated in Europe and succeeded his father to become the 48th imam. He was succeeded by his grandson, Karim AGa Khan upon his death in 1957. The Mausoleum is close to Aga Khan's white villa below, and is near the Monastery of St. Simeon on the west bank"
"PRIVATE ISLANDS"
"NUBIAN VILLAGE - In the Elephantine Island. The visit may be something between peculiar and a tourist trap..."
"HOTEL ISIS - Reflection"
Posts
47 comments:
Hi Folks! Aswan is mostly known for the immense dam that was built there and for the incredible lake that it generated between Egypt and Sudan... But there are some other sites to see in Aswan, which maybe more interesting than the dam... And from September this year, the Old Cataract Hotel will reopen with Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot and all the others coming out of the famous «Death on the Nile» book... Well, have a look, drop a line and have a great weekend, month and year ahead...
I had the opportunity to visit Aswan when the dam when it was under construction by the soviets...It was a beautiful place to visit back then when everything was more primitive...but your pictures make it even more so. Thanks for posting and sharing pictures of the Nile and the feukas as they call tem
beautiful post ..i hope to be in egypt this year..have a great year Gil and heres to amazing travels
J'aime bien le trafic sur le Nil. Beaucoup de bateaux, mais pas une impression de bouchons.
love the mausoleum on the hillock...
I saw the damn, luckily also other places, I remember visiting a Kopti Church and a Mosque also.
Beautiful, beautiful.
I think I should get a private island there also... I like the rocks, great shapes!!
Until now I had only studied about Aswan dam but now I feel like I've had a tour. Those are lot of ships there - private boats or for tourists?
The landscape is beautiful, may be the photographs are more beautiful.
The powers of the cathedral look like minarets in mughal architecture, while the domes somehow feel like "mosques" with crosses. The museum by the hill is absolutely gorgeous.
Memories...
Greetings from Casa!
Wonderful pictures, as always! Quite a treat indeed!
I remember them building the dam while I was at school. Lovely pics. The ones with the desert so close....amazing. The felucca's are so picturesque.
Pink mausoleum eh? Reminds me of the other great architectures in your India travel.
I'm yet to finish Zafon. But honestly, I dont want it to end. I'm enjoying it too much. Hv a great weekend.
Hi Gil,
Like those Henri Moor-style rocks on the Nile river.
Hard times for Egypt Christians...
Beautiful! And the church is so huge! :)
I especially enjoyed the felucca pictures. What incredibly graceful boats! The other high point for me was, "Henry Moore on the Nile." Absolutely perfect! It gave me a healthy giggle.
Très bonne année 2011.
Elle commence très bien pour nous avec tes belles photos de ces gracieux voiliers et les maisons dont les formes me rappellent les ghorfas du sud tunisien à Medenie.
Hello Gil, another great sequence of views! I really enjoy all these wonderful images and collages! So interesting the Archangel Michael's Cathedral and the Aga Khan Mausoleum.
Happy weekend!
It's amazing how the Nile continues to withstand the desert for centuries . Will it ever dry out?
Do these places ever have dust storms? or do the irrigate and dredge the river to keep it free flowing? It doesn't seem to be very wide and the desert is just on it's edges.
If only this waterway could talk.
What a beast it would be.
The opening shot is a real grabber, Gil.
Egypt is quite a place - all of that water of the Nile reflecting endless sand :)
Aswan is not how I thought it would be. Thank you for sharing your photos. It was interesting the see the rock formations and the Aga Kahn Mausoleum!
Happy Weekend to you and Mrs. T!!
xox
Constance
Stunning shots!
Aloha from Hawaii
Comfort Spiral
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Love the reflections in this last pic & the feluccas are just so...unique - something very old worldy about them.
seems to be a fantastic journey , what a beautiful place.
regards
Wow! These are awesome pics! Happy New Year to you! :)
now, i did a paper on aswan dam and its ecological effects in my masters!!!!
loving your pics !!!
Happy 2011. :) Very lovely photos and great travel. I wish my legs could bring me to places, been nursing a weak knee. :(
The cruise ship program hasn't changed since 2002 ! It's a pity that at that time I didn't take any pictures, I filmed the whole cruise.
A wonderful post... Awesome pics and good job on the collages!! I totally loved them...
Have a wonderful weekend:)
I enjoyed your photos of Egypt. It is a great place to visit.
I loved the photos of all the sailboats on the Nile. The river probably had the same vessals thousand sof years ago.
The Aga Khan Mausoleum is so large!
Nice shot of the Hotel Isis.
Happy 2011!
Great post! Really liking the first picture of the sail boat. I sure enjoy the world thru your lens.
the Nile is amazing :) and the church looks interesting!
Very lovely place. The shots are amazing.
Now,,,,, I would love to visit that hotel! Oh...and stay there too~ :)
I never had a chance to visit the Old Cataract Hotel, managing to see it only while sailing the Nile river on a felucca.
One unforgettable thing we did was walk up on one of those sandy golden hills for a great sunset moment in Aswan.
historic beauty!!
hi gmg! happy new year! thanks for this wonderful series as always, so nice to read and see...
Cataract Hotel-wow, this is how I have been always imagining views from the Nile:)
Stunning. That is the only way to describe it. You must have been really amazed to have seen the Nile in person.
Et bien ! L'abondance de l'eau ne doit pas être pour rien dans cette lumière et ces couleurs douces. On se croirait revenu au début du monde au paradis terrestre avec ces gros rochers qui ressemblent à des géants accroupis. Les fellouks glissent doucement, fines, élégantes, surmontées de voiles taillées comme des ailerons de requins.
(Elle était agréable la piscine de l'hôtel Isis ?)
These are really mind-boggling, Gil! I had little concept of this place so every detail is fascinating. Thank you for expanding my horizons! Georgianna
Hi Everybody! Many thanks to all those who dropped a line on this post; it’s becoming harder and harder to get a comment here… Probably some of the old pals are getting tired of the routine and the newcomers simply don’t think it’s worth while losing their time here… So, thanks a lot to all of you (old and new) who keep this blog alive…
A most disturbing feeling, however, comes from what I see at the «Followers» section: from the current sixty eight Followers of this blog (much less than the Followers that are still coming on the old closed Blogtrotter…), almost half of them I don’t have the faintest idea of who they are; and, of course, they had never left a single comment on any of the more than five hundred fifty posts published in all of my blogs… I wonder what do they follow… ;))
Have a great week, those very few of you (if any…) who read this…
Baron,
I can imagine how things may have been before the dam was built… More primitive and much more difficult to make a living there, probably… The city must have changed a lot now, but it’s far from being something so interesting as, for example, Luxor… Maybe with the reopening of the Old Cataract Hotel and the fans of Hercule Poirot it will improve… ;)
Lakshmi,
You lucky girl who can plan in advance when you are going to travel and where to you’ll be doing so… I wish I had that possibility again…
Hélène,
Pas de bouchons, sauf au départ de Louxor, quand tous les grands bateaux partent au même temps…
Siddhartha,
It’s amazing that building on the top of the hill… I wonder why the Aga Khan would like to have a mausoleum so close to the desert…
Susu,
So you saw the damn Dam… I didn’t find it so impressive… But the lake it created is so huge… Extraordinary how much water you may find so close to the desert… The Coptic church was also on the post!!
Juka,
It seems there are still lots of those small islands available; so, start counting your thousands or millions of euro… ;)
Priyank,
Most of the ships you see there are intended for tourist services… Actually some of them keep trapping the tourists with the felucca cruise with no wind… or with the trip to the Nubian village at an outrageous price, if you make a cost-benefit evaluation… ;)
P.N.Subramanian,
Thanks! The pictures are a bit blurred in some computers, as far as I’ve found… It seems that there is a digital side effect of enlarging them when uploading… Sorry!
Eye,
There is a great mix in that kind of architecture… But it seems that life is becoming a bit difficult for Christian Copts in Egypt, to judge from what happened in Alexandria at the beginning of the year…
Also love that Mausoleum…
Blogitse,
Indeed! Did you make that trip also?
Part Two:
Rakesh,
Thanks! Just «copies» of what mother Nature or Man have created… nothing more… ;)
Diane,
Don’t say that; you’re not that old… ;)) They started building the dam on January 9th, 1960, after a long period of discussions on the funding…
It’s incredible how close the desert is when you’re travelling on the Nile…
Leo,
That’s true; there are some fabulous mughal mausoleums in India!! And you’ve seen some on my posts… Great that you still remember that…
Zafon is fabulous; one can’t stop reading… ;)
G@tto,
Yeah, it seems that the Copts are having a tough time; at least taking into account what happened in Alexandria… Poor Meriam George… ;))
I remembered Moore’s reclining Figure at the Lincoln Centre in new York when I saw those rocks… ;)
Kyh,
I don’t know how many they are, but they built a church that can hold everyone who wishes to go there… ;)
Ted,
Those boats are truly romantic sailing the river…
The Moore monument was coming straight from the Lincoln Centre to the River Nile at Aswan… ;)
Daniel,
Je n’ai jamais vu les ghorfas du sud de Tunisie; le nom même m’était complètement inconnu… Mais si tu le dis, je le crois…
Merci pour le compliment… ;)
Pietro,
Of course, the Nile is far from being as green as the Val di Susa, but there are some splendid oasis nearby… ;)
The men made buildings are usually impressive; since some thousands of years ago… ;)
Lady,
I don’t know if it will ever dry out, but with the building of the dam, a huge lake was created… and the number of people who think that the dam created damages are higher than the profits it brought is definitely shrinking… There are several canals to irrigate some desert areas and the «beast» is much more controlled nowadays… ;)
Paul,
It was quite early in the morning, but the sun was already up and the feluccas were already sailing around… ;)
Part Three:
Constance,
I don’t know which idea you had of Aswan, but it looks a bit like what you may see in the pictures… ;). The rock formations, except for the «Henri Moore sculpture», look a lot like the rocks at the La Digue island in the Seychelles archipelago… ;)
Cloudia,
Aloha! Thanks!!
Dianne,
Probably they were already sailing some boats like that some thousands of years ago during the Pharaoh times… ;)
Seema,
It sure is a fabulous trip… Not only from what you see, what you learn, but also from what you may imagine…
Yvonne,
Thanks! The awe comes much more from your eyes than from the pictures I took... ;)
Star,
There is some controversy on the effects of the dam, but in the end it seems that benefits over passed damages... At least that’s what you may conclude when you read what happened... Except if you follow that observer quoted in Wikipedia, which recommended that «the dam should be torn down»... ;))
Alice,
Wish you a full and fast recovery of your knee... Careful with it; it’s not an easy task to walk around with a knee in bad shape...
Gattina,
I think that they basically do the same cruise programme (and they depart at the same time also...) since many years ago; actually there is no other way to go: you have to follow the River... ;). I’m not using the video anymore... and I’m a bit concerned that my old videos are not in good shape to be converted in more modern technologies...
Arti,
Thanks for your visit and first time comment at Blogtrotter two! Look forward to reading you here more often!!
The collages came out quite well this time...
Julia
Thanks for your visit and first time comment at Blogtrotter two! Look forward to reading you here more often!!
It sure is a great place to visit!!
Part Four and final, for the time being...
Pat,
I agree with you; it seems that the feluccas were already there some thousands of years ago; the best way to sail the Nile... ;)
The Aga Khan mausoleum by the Nile can’t be considered so huge; just think of the Mao Zedong mausoleum at Tiananmen... ;)
Ron,
Thanks! I’m truly glad that you enjoy seeing some parts of the world through my lens!! And I’m truly grateful to always find your comment in every new post I publish...
Mariposa,
Time to start reading «Death on the Nile» again... Hercule Poirot makes it much more amazing than you could anticipate... ;)
Rajesh,
I’m a bit confused: Mariposa says that the Nile is amazing; you say that the shots are amazing... I think someone has to decide it... ;))
Lynn,
The Old Cataract (not the Isis...) will re-open September 2011... I think you’ll have a great winter holiday far from the snow... ;))
Nomadic,
There will be a great chance to visit the Old Cataract Hotel from September 2011 onwards... the mythic hotel is going to re-open as a Sofitel... So, you have better start packing... ;))
I was on my way to the Sound and Light show at Philae at sunset... also an interesting choice...
Magic,
Beauty in History!!
B.C.,
Welcome back!! Long time no see... I almost lost your address since last Blogtrotter; I actually think it’s the first time I read you at Blogtrotter Two!! Keep commenting!! ;)
Ola,
Well, Winter palace in Luxor and Old Cataract in Aswan, that’s what may be called travelling in style... No wonder you imagined it that way... ;))
Flutietootie,
I must confess that it was a fantastic trip... Except that our private guide wasn’t that good; but we were prepared for every contingency... ;))
Lucie,
C’est sûr que l’eau a joué un rôle important dans couleur et les reflets des photos; en fait, la douceur que tu trouves dans les photos était beaucoup plus impressionnante en direct… ça veut dire au niveau de l’eau du fleuve… Et, heureusement, il n’y avait pas (ou mieux, on n’a pas trouvé…) des crocodiles… ;))
Georgianna,
My pleasure dear! I’m truly glad that you liked the post and found it of interest… I’ll try to continue posting something attractive on this blog… ;)
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